It is generally accepted that we have moved past the age
of the lone inventor working in his garage, but an exception
to the rule seems to be Vladimir Demin — a 62-year-old circuit
designer currently residing in Moscow. Using nothing but
hand tools (primarily a drill, as the project required 3,000+
high-tolerance holes), he created an automatic guitar-playing
machine.

The device uses a slew of solenoids for picking and
fretting — all controlled via an ADSP2187 CPU. It draws 30A
at 12V, but Vladimir says it can play continuously for two to
four hours without a battery change. Fortunately, Eric Clapton
doesn't need to worry about the competition, but it does do
a pretty amazing job on an old Russian song that must remain
unnamed here as I don't seem to have a Cyrillic font on my machine. You can check out the
video by searching on You Tube for his name. His next project — in case you are wondering —
will be a high-tech accordion player that can perform a duet with the guitar.

Vladimir Demin's automatic guitar.

8 SERVO 11.2013
by Jeff and Jenn Eckert
Robytes

VTOL Anything

Since 1943, the famous Skunk Works (a.k.a., Advanced
Development Programs) division of Lockheed Martin
(
www.lockheedmartin.com) has been responsible for many advanced
(and secretive) aircraft designs, including the U- 2 spy plane, the F-117
Nighthawk, and the F- 35 Lightning II. More recently, the skunks have
been working with Piasecki Aircraft (
www.piasecki.com) to develop
a new autonomous vehicle dubbed the Transformer TX.

The original concept (as described back in the January 2011 issue)
was to build a rotor-driven flying car, but eventually the designers
decided to dump the car portion of it, thereby creating a mechanism
that can lock onto any suitable cargo pod and fly away with it. The
production version — scheduled to take flight by 2015 — will be
powered by ducted fans that can drive it at 200 knots within a
range of 250 miles.

According to the company, the TX's unique design will allow it
to "adapt to multiple missions with interchangeable payloads,
including cargo pods, medical evacuation units, a tactical ground
vehicle, armed scouts, and reconnaissance and strike capabilities."